with her food. A very greedy little thing, that dog of yours.’
A door bell.
‘That’ll be the flower delivery. Come on, let’s open the door.’
Farkas, his hands in the air, slowly walks to the front door, Rosa behind him.
‘Ask who it is,’ orders Rosa.
‘Flower delivery,’ resounds from beyond the door.
‘Maribor doesn’t do flower deliveries, except to the cemetery,’ says Farkas abruptly.
‘We call this the European approach,’ says Rosa.
Farkas opens the door to Adam Bely. A couple of minutes later Farkas sits tied up on the living-room floor, holding the cylindrical electrodes. Deep snoring of Vila the poodle next to him.
‘Is this his personal trick, or is it some common Maribor folk tradition to paint a poodle’s tail purple?’ Rosa addresses Bely as he frisks Farkas’s coat and bag. He finds an envelope and counts out at least thirty thousand euros.
‘What’s this?’ he asks as he turns on the E-meter device. Rosa turns on the Dictaphone and lights another cigarette.
‘We don’t smoke in this house,’ says Farkas quietly.
‘Where has this money come from?’
‘I lent it to a guy, and now he’s paid me back.’
‘I see, says Bely’, keeping track of the E-meter needle.
‘You come from Lendava, is that correct?’
‘From the way you speak, you could be from Maribor,’ replies Farkas. ‘Do you have any idea how long you’ll be put away for this? You’re good for ten years, and you’ll beg me to call in a favour with my prosecutor colleague when they tear you apart in court.’
‘The motto of your legal office was Suum cuique.’
‘To each his own. Correct,’ says Farkas.
‘I assume the envelope with all that money adheres to that slogan, too.’
‘You can have this conversation with the police, or, even better, from solitary, where you’ll have plenty of time to think things through.’
‘That’s enough, Farkas. Tomi gave you the envelope, the head of the Volleys. Where would a kid like that get so much money?’
Farkas says nothing. Softly and steadily, Bely taps his fountain pen against the palm of his hand. Farkas’s bloodshot eyes bulge further as he studies Bely’s palms, one of which is injured. His eyes dart from the pen to Bely to Vila’s purple tail. The dog’s fur rises and falls with heavy breaths. He hears the ceramic fountain pen as it hits flat against Bely’s wounded palm, the vibrations that spread evenly across the room and bounce off him back to Bely. Bely feels the vibrations as they settle into his body. Watchfully he stares at Farkas’s big, bloodshot, never-shut eyes, which stare back at him. Tired, his corneas look like cocoons of heavily interwoven capillaries. As if the tiniest of the spiders were about to nestle in, the purple tail of the fountain pen, bloody trail, ceramics, blood-filled pools, soft Persian rug, the beating of a canine heart, heavy look, vibrations, the arching ground that opens up into the room, tick, tiring, they bend like sheets, tack, palm, eyes, tail, tick, pencil, breath, tack, pool.
Rosa’s voice calls out to Bely to open his eyes. There’s something soft underneath him. His nose and mouth are stuffed with purple tail fur. It’s Vila, who lies on the rug beside him.
‘What happened? Where’s Farkas?’
‘Don’t worry, he’s safe, upstairs in the bedroom. I put him there before I woke you up. He managed to hypnotize you while you tried to hypnotize him. Never seen anything like it before. All of a sudden you stumbled and fell across one another.’
‘My head.’
‘You were lucky you missed the table, but the dog broke your fall, and you probably broke all of her bones, poor little thing!’
‘Come on, let’s go upstairs,’ says Bely, as he grabs the E-meter and staggers to the staircase.
The bedroom door on the first floor is wide open. Farkas, still tied up, lies next to the bed, his mouth Scotch-taped. Bely pulls Farkas up and over to the mirror.
‘I should’ve practised more,’ mutters Bely. ‘I can’t get the hypnosis to work, not even before the mirror.’
Bely leaves and returns with his coat, feels around the pockets and pulls out his little bottle of pills.
‘You’re not going to give him your fat-reducing pills, are you?’ laughs Rosa.
Bely throws her a serious glance. He continues to feel around in his pockets. A small case, an ampoule, a needle, Bely attaches it to a syringe. Farkas tries to resist as Bely rolls up his sleeve. On his upper arm, a tattoo of the Maribor football club logo, a castle with a bird on the blossom of a violet. The needle pierces the castle, light tightening of the skin, a frozen moment. Farkas calms down, turns languid and mellow.
‘We’ve got about twenty minutes,’ says Bely. ‘The serum only works that long.’
Bely tears the Scotch tape off Farkas’s mouth and turns on the Dictaphone.
‘Where did you get the envelope with the money?’
Farkas stutters incomprehensibly. Bely grabs him by his shirt and slaps his face.
‘Answer me! Where did you get that money in the envelope?’
‘It’s a week’s worth of earnings from my Volleys.’
‘Your Volleys?’
‘Nobody knows about it, they all think that the Volleys are a bunch of football fans. But some of them are also members of a well-organized group, which I run.’
‘What group?’
‘Well, we do personal protection, primarily politicians, but also businessmen. It’s less likely that I’ll ever see you in court if you have our protection. We also deal with other stuff, but on a much smaller scale.’
‘Like what?’
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